Monday, August 01, 2005

Il faut souffrir pur etre belle

Otherwise known as suffering in the name of vanity.....

Stays. Don't you love 'em? Such a pretty, delicate brocade shell - John Lewis upholstery fabric, no less, like most of the rest of my stays - and then fully boned underneath. Like light armour plate. Fully boned, mind, means there's hardly an inch of unboned material. Hell, I hope they don't have metal detectors on the train station - it's always so embarrassing having to remove the steels from your corset to demonstrate that really, you are not an international terrorist, you just happen to be wearing stays.... (Yes, it has happened to me before, which will teach me to go out wearing my stays as a top!)Anyway, a weekend's work, give or take a few hours, and I have my corset mounted on my tailor's dummy in the corner of the room ready from some serious brocade-on-brocade action.Seriously, I'm horribly proud of that corset - I think it's one of the best things I've ever done, and if I don't get the edges bound soon I'm probably going to sever an artery on one of the edges of the steels still showing through the fabric. All that considered, it does what it's supposed to do, and gives me a splendid period shape of flat front and bosom up round my chin somewhere. Best not to mention the waist reduction. Not sure if the beloved is perfectly keen on squeezing me in by a good 5 inches....